The purpose of a lesson plan is really quite simple; it is to communicate. But, you might ask, communicate to whom? The answer to this question, on a practical basis, is YOU! The lesson plans you develop are to guide you in organizing your material and yourself for the purpose of helping your students achieve intended learning outcomes. Whether a lesson plan fits a particular format is not as relevant as whether or not it actually describes what you want, and what you have determined is the best means to an end. If you write a lesson plan that can be interpreted or implemented in many different ways, it is probably not a very good plan. This leads one to conclude that a key principle in creating a lesson plan is specificity. It is sort of like saying, "almost any series of connecting roads will take you from Key West Florida to Anchorage Alaska, eventually." There is however, one and only one set of connecting roads that represents the shortest and best route. Best means that, for example, getting to Anchorage by using an unreliable car is a different problem than getting there using a brand new car. What process one uses to get to a destination depends on available resources and time. So, if you agree that the purpose of a lesson plan is to communicate, then, in order to accomplish that purpose, the plan must contain a set of elements that are descriptive of the process. Let's look at what those elements should be.
Lesson planning is one of the core skills that are part of professional preparation. These skills are usually taught in schools or colleges of education in a series of modules or presentations that initially involve developing a learning objective based on a curriculum, or set of explicit subject-matter goals. The next step requires sequencing a number of activities in which the teacher and students interact in some way. Following this interaction, there is an assessment and the next lesson begins in the unit or other sequence that follows a curricular structure. There are, however, some variables that relate to the instructional activities that should be considered. What follows is a brief description of some of them.
Characteristics of a Good Lesson Planning
Any planned instructional procedure or teaching
method for a particular lesson must address the following questions:
Does the lesson plan permit adjustment for
students with different abilities?
There probably has never been a teacher who has a
class of students whose members were of equal ability. The instructional
method(s) planned for a particular lesson must take into account student
ability. There is no substitute for doing this. The range of abilities in which
students differ is truly staggering. Included are cognitive disorders,
emotional handicaps, physical handicaps, and student mastery of appropriate
prerequisites for any given lesson. It's a load to factor all this in, but as a
lesson planner, you should at least have a serious awareness of this.
Does
the lesson plan encourages the students to become continually involved in
learning activities?
Instructional activities or procedures should not
be static descriptions of what the teacher and students will do. Any good
teacher will tell you that he or she makes adjustments in instruction based on
feedback from students. The idea is obviously to keep students focused and
involved in learning. For students to be continually involved in learning
activities will require resourcefulness on the part of the teacher, but it is a
consideration important to planning any lesson.
Does the lesson provide for adequate coverage of
the content to be learned for all students?
"Adequate" and "cover" are
such weasel terms! They can mean almost anything, depending on whom you ask,
and often mean little or nothing. Probably the best way to think about this is
to say to yourself, "what is the least amount of content that students
should learn to indicate some level of agreed-upon mastery?" Notice
the operative word is "learn." If you've thought about what you're
doing, you will have specified this level of learning in the criterion
statement of the lesson objective. Click on that learn link above and read in
the Johnson Schema for curriculum what I mean by learning.
Does the lesson permit for monitoring of student
progress?
You should consider how you will monitor the
progress of your students during the lesson itself. There are ways to this, and
these ways are collectively referred to in education jargon as formative
evaluation. This entire means is that you must determine how you will monitor
the progress of your students. The purpose of this monitoring is not just to
collect information about student progress. Rather, it is to have ways in mind
about how to use this information to make instant changes in lesson procedures.
If you consider a lesson as a collection of discrete activities that are
sequenced in some responsible way, then each activity has a beginning and an
end. The ends may be thought of as events, and it is here that meaningful
information about student progress may be derived. The events are
"milestones" on the path toward the lesson objective. Information
about how your students are progressing may indicate that some reconsolidation
and reordering of the sequence of the milestones is warranted.
Does the lesson provide for adequate assistance
for students who do not learn from the initial procedure?
If only everyone "got it" right the
first time! The reality is that almost no lesson is 100% reliable. That means
some students will fall behind. They "won't get it," and you need to
think about what to do about that. The problem is compounded because you are
confronted with the real problem of what to do with the students who did
"get it" while you are attending to those who didn't. Usual
pedagogical thinking suggests that the "got it" students can be given
some ancillary work or some enrichment materials while you work with the
students who need your help. Maybe, but just be aware that this will start to
wear thin after a few lessons. This is one of the eternal problems in teaching,
and it has really not been solved to anyone's satisfaction.
Does the lesson provide adequate practice to
permit consolidation and integration of skills?
Vince Lombardi, the legendary former coach of the
Green Bay Packers is reputed to have said, "Practice does not make
perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." Of course, he was talking about
skills related to playing football. The operative word here is skills. There is
no substitute for developing and honing skills other than practice. That always
means, in a practical sense, that there is a skilled observer of the practice
who can provide feedback to the learner. It is true in every field where skills
are taught n some formal way. The quality of the practice, and just as
important, the quality of the feedback to the learner is indispensable.
Skills are one thing, but what about conceptual
learning? What about understandings we want our students to acquire? Is there
any way to practice developing concepts? This is a thorny question. Since
concepts are unique to the individual forming them, it is difficult to
"practice" doing this. Probably the best a teacher can do is having
students explain in more than one way what they know. Therefore, conceptual
learning is incompatible with multiple-choice tests. The preceding descriptions
are opinions. They are not true. Anyone planning a lesson should at least keep
in mind the posed questions. Answering them for each lesson can improve
instruction.
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